Photo Provided

The Cleveland School in the Sandy Mill community, near Camden, was slated to be demolished and replaced, however, a tragic fire during a school commencement play killed 77 people in the small community.

Photo Provided

Bertie Hendrix was the star of the play that was being performed the night the Cleveland School in Kershaw County caught fire in 1923. She perished along with her father.

If you've ever been annoyed by the shrill sound of a fire alarm and if you've ever been interrupted with one of those non-announced fire drills at school where everyone follows an orderly, pre-arranged exit from the building, then you can reflect upon the origin of all of that protocol now. Much of the school fire drill regimen we're used to came about because of a tragic school fire in Kershaw County on Thursday evening of May 17, 1923.

Cleveland School was located approximately 8 miles east of Camden, in what was known as the Sandy Mill community.

The rural area was home to Davises, Dixons, Godwins, Hendrixes, McCleods, McCaskills, Phillips, Sowells, Truesdales and Wests. Many were of Scots-Irish descent and had roots in the region dating to pre-Revolutionary days when Camden was known simply as Pine Top.

The father of former Governor John Carl West was one of the ones to perish in the awful fire that occurred when a lantern fell off a wall in the school auditorium and caught the stage curtain on fire.

For a number of years, a commencement play had been held at the Cleveland School, an institution named in honor of the first Democratic president since the War Between the States. In 1923 the upstairs auditorium was packed with an overflow crowd of nearly 300 people because this was the last event before the old building was to be torn down.

The play that Thursday evening was "Topsy-Turvy," a comedy and there were expected to be lots of laughs before the curtain fell for the final time.

Sixteen-year-old Bertie Hendrix, daughter of William and Johanna Irene Hendrix, had the lead role, and tradition has it that she was to be the class valedictorian, as well. As the playgoers were becoming entranced in the unfolding comedy, a spotlight that was, in fact, a gas lantern suspended on a nail by the stage, suddenly dropped to the stage floor with a loud crash and flames spread across the floor to some bales of straw that were serving as a backdrop. Everyone, even the actors, remained calm as men from the front rows leaped to the stage to beat out the quickly spreading flames.

In the minute or so that it took to comprehend the seriousness of the event many theater-goers in the back started down the narrow, 30-inch-wide, stairwell which bottlenecked at a small landing before descending at right angles down another flight. Panic swept through the auditorium when the theater curtain burst into flames and wood from the heart pine flooring began to burn.

Meanwhile, at the stair landing someone tripped and a pile up of bodies occurred with no way of warning the stampeders that there was a crush of bodies ahead of them. Someone flung open a window and leaped two floors to the hard earth below. Some opened a few more windows for others to jump, but the open windows fed oxygen into the already raging combustion and the result was a fireball that developed inside the heart pine second floor auditorium.

The year 1923 was not the "dark ages," and rural South Carolinians were especially alert to the dangers of fire.

A 1915 school fire in Peabody, Mass., a few miles west of Salem and Marblehead, killed 21 girls as fire swept through the multi-story building.

The building had no fire escape; however, the Sisters who ran the Catholic school for girls routinely conducted fire drills. St. John School had made news in The State newspaper and on the radio, yet, no efforts were made nationwide to standardize fire fighting or fire safety procedures.

A similar incident, though much deadlier, had occurred in 1908 in Collinwood, Ohio, when a school building caught fire and 172 students and teachers died. School superintendents around the land knew of these things, yet establishing a nationwide set of standards seemed beyond the scope of the times.

Fifty years had passed since Mrs. O'Leary's cow supposedly knocked over a lantern and set all of Chicago ablaze in 1871. Banjo pickers and pianists plucked out the tune of "It'll Be A Hot Time In The Old Town Tonight," at every political rally, and the newest line of business in nearby Camden was the property and casualty insurance agency. San Francisco erupted into flames in 1909 as gas lines broke during the 7.9 magnitude earthquake and 450 people died as a result of the flames and smoke inhalation - almost double the number that had died in the Chicago fire. Various fires in commercial districts throughout the northeast dramatized the need to standardize fire hose and fire hydrant couplings so that various fire fighting units could use hydrants with universal fittings, and sprinklers were coming into use in high rise buildings in New York after the terrible 1911 fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company where so many young female seamstresses leapt to their death. Henry Parmalee of New Haven had developed a sprinkler system for commercial buildings, but it did not become a part of very many fire prevention plans until the Triangle fire.

News of the Cleveland School fire spread across America almost as quickly as the flames had caught fire to the stage curtains. The Detroit Free Press used the story as its lead on the front page for Saturday, May 19, 1923. "Toll of Death in School Fire Mounts to 76: Victims of South Carolina tragedy are buried in one huge grave," says the bold print. A country music singer recorded a song about the Cleveland School fire, and it made the rounds on radio stations. More importantly, legislators, city council members, and school boards across the land were motivated to make improvements in fire safety. Nothing came overnight; however, within a decade all schools mandated fire drills, safe occupancy number limitations, marked and lighted exits, and routine fire marshal inspections.

Firefighters swapped information and learned from each other across the region. Fire escape plans and fire escape ladders became standard fixtures in schools.

A website entitled "Walking with Ghosts - a website for the descendants of Angus and Nancy McCutchen MacLeod," has lovingly preserved the memory of so many of the victims as well as quite a few of the survivors. It has been said that this school fire is, to date, our state's single worst tragedy as far as death toll is concerned. The crash of Eastern Airlines Flight 212 in Charlotte in 1974 claimed 74 lives, most of whom were South Carolinians.

As the fire swept across the stage, Charlie Hendrix, age 52, the father of Bertie Hendrix, the 16-year-old star of the show, guided others to safety and returned to the blaze to search for his daughter.

The second floor was buckling and appeared ready to plunge into the ground floor as Hendrix started back up. A man tried to hold Charlie Hendrix back, but he said, "I must find Bertie." Bertie Hendrix was an only child and the pride of the entire community.

"You'll never make it back!" shouted the bystander. "Then watch me die with her," came Hendrix' reply. Father's and daughter's remains were indeed found close together in the smoldering ashes. The fire had been so hot that even the nails and metal fixtures had melted. Many of the dead were unidentifiable, and all were buried in a common grave at Beulah United Methodist Church just a mile away.

The passing of 93-year-year-old Pearl Godwin Tiller of Mcbee is the end of the era where eyewitnesses kept the memory alive.

She was a 5-year-old child and lost a relative, probably a sister, named Mary Lyne Godwin, in the fire.

Think on these things the next time a fire drill interrupts your day or the red glare of an exit light distracts you at a theater.

(Dr. Thomas B. Horton is a history teacher at Porter-Gaud School. He lives in the Old Village of Mount Pleasant. See more columns online at www.moultrienews.com. Visit his Web site at www.historyslostmoments.com).